India`s campaign over at New Zealand Badminton Open

Auckland: India`s campaign at the New Zealand Badminton Open ended on Friday after Ajay Jayaram and Arvind Bhat lost their respective quarterfinal matches of the men`s singles event here.

While Jayaram, seeded third, retired from his quarterfinal tie to hand over qualifier Xue Song of China a place in the last four stage of the tournament, Bhat went down tamely to second seed Jen Hao Hsu of Chinese Taipei. Having lost the opening game 12-21, Jayaram was down 10-15 in the second game when he decided to quit. The 25-year-old Indian battled for 27 minutes before finally giving up. Earlier in the day, Jayaram had played a hard-fought third round match to prevail over 12th seeded Ji Hoon Hong of South Korea 14-21 28-26 21-13. It took him an hour and nine minutes to get the better of the Korean. Seeded 13th, Bhat, however failed to pose any threat to Jen Hao Hsu, losing his round of 16 match 6-21 17-21 in 39 minutes. But he had done well in his third round match earlier today, getting the better of sixth seed Indonesian Andre Kurniawan Tedjono 21-19 21-10 in 41 minutes. PTI